Luke 17:11-19
A Samaritan leper wasn’t a good thing to be in Jesus’ day. They were stigmatized by the people in Jerusalem and Judea. Jerusalemites looked upon Samaritans as being half-bred or impure, part Jewish and part Gentile in blood. They saw lepers as unclean outcasts whom God had cursed with a skin disease that made them look like the walking dead. To be unclean meant they were cut off from all society and not allowed to come near any place where the Lord God might be worshipped; certainly not Jerusalem. They were not allowed to touch or be touched by someone non-leprous for they would pass on this uncleanness.
But Jesus wasn’t like those “good religious people “ down in Jerusalem. The Gospels tell us that Jesus spent most of his life, time, and ministry not among the “good religious people” down in Jerusalem, but rather with those whom the Jerusalemites considered to be the dregs and outcasts of the Jewish nation, the “sinners”. It was among the “sinners” that Jesus healed and cast out demons and proclaimed the Gospel, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” So, it was not unusual that a small leper colony would come to Jesus asking for healing mercy.
So, that’s what this entire colony of lepers did. They came to Jesus, the one whose power and authority didn't come from robes and rules but from God. Jesus, was their only avenue to the LORD God who could be moved with compassion towards them and heal them. They were tired of being treated as social pariah. They wanted this apparent curse of death gone. They couldn't go to the priests. They couldn’t go to the temple because the ancient Israelites believed that death could not come into the presence of God. These lepers looked and smelled like death. Jesus was their only avenue to the God of Israel to make their request.
Jesus' means of healing them was a bit odd. He told them to get on as if they were already healed, to go and show themselves to the priests; go and face the ones who had the “authority” to make the declaration that they were clean and could return to normal life. So, they set out and as the go, their leprosy heals. They become clean. They could go into the Temple, into the presence of God…and even into the presence of the priests.
One of the men happened to notice that he had been healed. He turned back to Jesus and began praising God loudly. He fell on his face before Jesus worshipping him and giving him thanks. And…Luke makes a point of saying, “This man was a Samaritan.” And we are supposed to see the irony there that a “half-breed” leper knows that Jesus is the LORD God in their midst when the ‘pure bred” religious authorities, the priests, did not. Jesus told the man “Stand and go! Your faith has made you well.”
In Greek the word for “to be made well” is the same as “to be saved”. Another way of saying “your faith has made you well” is, “Your faith has delivered you onto salvation.” Now, I want to draw out here that there is a distinction between being healed as in cleansed and being made well as in saved or delivered into the Kingdom of God. The cleansing made the leper able to be in the presence of God but his resulting act of faithfulness, of actually turning back to Jesus to worship him because he knew the LORD God of Israel was working in, through, and as this Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean, that's what actually saved him. His turning to Jesus and worshipping him was his salvation; salvation meaning that he was now a resident in the realm of the Kingdom of God delivered from the realm of sin and death. Being cleansed at a word from Jesus of those things that we are ashamed of and which separate us from God and make us feel cut off from God and from others is one thing. Turning to Christ in worship and following him, living under his Lordship, is another.
The Gospel that Jesus preached was “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” To be saved is to be delivered from this sin infected world into the Kingdom of God under the direct Lordship of Jesus Christ, following him. That’s what it is to be saved. Following Jesus is salvation. The wellness that this former leper was experiencing by his faith in Jesus, his recognition that Jesus is Lord that came as the result of his cleansing and healing, his turning back to Jesus, was the wellness of salvation.
In the language of Paul, the Samaritan Leper had received God’s seal, the gift of the Holy Spirit who is the pledge that everything God has promised to us for the future is for real (Eph. 1:13-14). The Holy Spirit was at work in the leper and made him well. If one knows oneself to be cleansed and set right before God and cannot help but to turn to Jesus to praise and thank him knowing that he is God, then one knows oneself to be saved, delivered and experiencing now through the Holy Spirit a small taste of the Kingdom of God wellness that we will know in full when God makes all things new. Faith is the result of knowing you’ve been cleansed and healed because the Holy Spirit has come to you and its most true-to-heart expression is turning to Jesus to praise and thank God.
About the other nine…well, the main message of this passage is not about the ingratitude of the other nine. The core message is about cleansing, healing, and being delivered into the Kingdom of God by Jesus Christ. But, like Jesus we must ask what about those other nine. Why does Jesus seem so shocked that they did not return to him? I think Jesus isn’t indignant towards them for their ingratitude but rather he is surprised that they did not turn back to him in faith. For some reason they don't realize the full implications of their having been cleansed. They do not realize who he is. If it is the work of the Holy Spirit to show us who Jesus is, then the Holy Spirit was seemingly not showing them. I think that surprised Jesus quite a bit. Where did they go? What did they do? I reckon they just get on with their new life not realizing that their new life is in Jesus.
So how does this apply to us today? Well, because God the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit became human as Jesus Christ and bore in himself all of humanity’s sin and died with it on the cross and in turn God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead every human being there ever was, is, and will be has been cleansed. There is nothing that can keep anyone ever from turning to Jesus Christ in praise and thanksgiving and by and through him experiencing the wellness of being delivered into the Kingdom of God. This wellness is nothing other than the gift of the Holy Spirit who unites us to Jesus Christ and in, with, and through him we experience God the Father’s love for all people as his children. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
We who in faith know to turn to Jesus in worship know this by faith because we are united to God in Christ through the Spirit. Moreover, nothing can prevent every other person there is from knowing this too because they also have been cleansed in the one act of Jesus Christ. There is nothing that can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the cleansing, i.e. the forgiveness of all peoples, universally so. Everybody is forgiven. A blanket of forgiveness now covers the sins of all peoples because of the love of God in Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb of God who took/takes away the sin of the world. What is surprising is that all peoples do not realize that they have been cleansed by Jesus Christ and thus do not turn to him in worship and instead put their faith in other things and therefore miss out on the wellness, the salvation of being delivered now into the Kingdom of God. The “other nine” just don’t get it. We like Jesus ought to be greatly surprised at this. Not that they are ungrateful but that the Holy Spirit is seemingly not at work in them. It’s a shocking as when those who have the Spirit are ungrateful and turn away from Jesus.
We are like the Samaritan leper. We know Jesus is the Lord. We know our lives are incomplete without him and his reign in our lives. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is genuinely at work in our lives, changing us to be more and more healed and cleansed so that we live as the image of Jesus Christ, the reflection of Jesus Christ shining forth into the world. Our responsibility as healed lepers is to live authentically in his image, to be a loving community of his disciples who love one another and our neighbours sacrificially as he has loved us expecting nothing in return so that the “other nine” who surround us will see in our love the Lordship of Jesus. And know that there is new life in him. The church in North America has tended from day one to carry on like Jerusalemites who sit in judgement of the moral purity of others all the while having forgotten that we are at heart leprous Samaritans in need of Jesus, his healing power, and his reign. Loving one another and our neighbours authentically as our worship of our Lord is our responsibility seeing that we know who he is and the Holy Spirit is at work in us. As far as the other nine, only the Father knows. Our task is to reach out as the living proof of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Amen.
